I’d like to propose a toast. To my own toaster. It’s a simple two-slice job I’ve had for years. I bought at a bargain price from Kogan, and it’s one of the best toasters I’ve had. Since the day I bought it, maybe seven or eight years ago – perhaps even more – it hasn’t skipped a beat. Whether for breakfast, lunch or a late-night snack, whenever I’ve needed toast, it’s done the job, consistently and reliably.
The same, it seems, cannot be said of some of the toasters CHOICE has had the displeasure of reviewing lately. The leading consumer advocate has sunk the boots into some famous brands, including Russell Hobbs and Sunbeam, in its latest round of toaster assessments.
As one might expect, some of the toasters that have copped CHOICE’s wrath are at the cheaper end of the price spectrum. But the reviewers did not spare the rod when it came to reviewing top-end toasters either. In fact, one of the toasters that made it onto the reviewers’ ‘don’t buy’ list comes with a price tag of $490!
Toasters – the cheap, the pricey and the ugly
To give you some time to digest the idea of a toaster costing $490, we’ll look at cheaper ones first. CHOICE’s review system provides an overall expert rating and a ‘toasting evenness score’, both represented in percentage terms.
The cheapest of their ‘bottom 8’ toasters was the $29 Anko 4 Slice Long Slot. The Kmart brand toaster received an overall expert rating of 53 per cent. For toasting evenness, however, it scored only 40 per cent, based on tests on both white and multigrain bread.
Next in line price-wise was another Kmart toaster, the Anko 4 Slice Toaster LD-T7006A, at $49. This one rated worse in both the departments than its cheaper sibling. Its expert rating was 48 per cent and its toasting evenness score a dismal 20 per cent. That combination gave it the dubious honour of being the lowest-ranked of the 63 toasters CHOICE rated.
Sunbeam toasters are the next two in the bottom 8 in terms of price. The Sunbeam Simply Shine 4 Slice Toaster TAP4004BK costs $100 but had an expert rating of only 52 per cent and scored only 30 per cent for toasting evenness.
The slightly pricier ($129) Sunbeam Arise 4 Slice Long Slot Toaster appropriately scored slightly better. Its expert rating was 55 per cent and its toasting evenness score was 40 per cent. Coincidentally, those two scores exactly matched those of the $150 Russell Hobbs Attentiv 2 Slice Toaster RHT802.
However, the considerably more expensive ($235) Alessi Plisse Electric Toaster MDL08 B/AU ranked worse in both areas. In fact its two scores – expert rating 52 per cent, evenness 30 per cent – were identical to Sunbeam’s $100 model.
There’s more than one way to get burnt
That leaves us with the two most expensive toasters in CHOICE’s bottom 8. Both of the toasters cost more than $400. I must admit I’m having trouble getting my head around spending such an amount on a toaster. Still, each to their own, and those willing to pay such a price should be entitled to expect good quality.
Unfortunately, in the case of the Bugatti Volo Toaster 13-SVOLOC1/AU, they apparently did not get that. Its expert rating of 56 per cent and evenness score of 40 per cent surely doesn’t justify its price. That price? $439, for a toaster that was in the words of CHOICE, “outclassed by a Kmart toaster”.
The one defence I can make of the Bugatti toaster is that it at least looks sleek and futuristic. On the other hand (at least to my eye), the $490 Milantoast 2 Slice Toaster looks like a bog standard toaster. It received an expert rating of 54 per cent and but in terms of evenness it rated a very poor 20 per cent. It was particularly poor at handling multigrain bread, the reviewers said.
Don’t get browned off by these toasters
So there you have it, the toasters you should steer well away from. You can find out more about where they fell down here. And if you’re a CHOICE member, you can check out the toasters that ranked highest.
Have you bought a toaster recently? How would you rate it? Let us know via the comments section below.
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Is this a click bait article that YLC got paid by Choice to do? Would have been handier to your readers if you advised what the best at a reasonable price was instead of just saying click here if you are a Choice subscriber to read their best end reviews otherwise sign up to membership which imo is more ridiculous than buying a Bugatti toaster!
Yes agree……click bait……….a good review would have shown a chart from best to worst……..but then again, this is a teaser to get you to sign up to choice…..